Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Pro-Israeli demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in London

I got there just as the crowd of (I think) a couple of thousand were singing God Save the Queen. As the pictures show among the sea of Israeli flags there were several Union flags as well (and one St George's flag), a point of honour for organizers of pro-Israeli demonstrations.

A very rough estimate of numbers was about a thousand, which is not bad considering the speed with which this was arranged. The pro-Palestinian counter-demo was easily outnumbered and, as I told the Boss, the girls in the pro-Israeli demo were considerably prettier. Actually, the chaps were, on the whole, better looking though that does not necessarily show up on my amateurish photographs.

Once again, praise is due to the police (and the security provided by ZDF, the organizers) who effortlessly kept the two groups apart and under control. Keeping the pro-Israeli demonstrators is never that difficult; the other lot, who does nothing but shouts chants of hatred is something else. One young lady, fully covered but not veiled so we could all see her hate-twisted face, was escorted across the road to Kensington Gardens by three police officers, accompanied by jeers and laughter from the flag-waving crowd.

Many cars, buses and, especially, taxis hooted their support. Taxis were particularly voluble, which means either that the old tradition of Jewish taxi drivers is alive and well or that cabbies are naturally in favour of feisty nations like the Israelis.

The pictures give some idea of what was going on but my favourite is the one that calls for the liberation of Gaza from Hamas. My sentiments exactly.

8 comments:

No pro-Israel demonstrations here in Sweden. Instead our esteemed FM, Mr Bildt travelled down to Istanbul to meet the released Swedish "activists". His worry about these people seems just a tad unseemly considering the fact that during his soon 4 years as FM he has totally ignored the plight of the Swedish citizen and journalist Isaac Dawit who is imprisoned in his native Eritrea, under what is in all likelihood appaling conditions.

You have nothing to apologise for, I read a lot of blogs and didn't see any mention of this in them either! However if the British blogosphere is going to have influence we do need to get better at spreading the word for events like this.